here's Johnny

An inimitable cohort with the real • click to embiggenWe all know that photography has a special relationship with the real and, at times, is fully capable of capturing the truth of things.

The medium and its tools are uniquely equipped to capture those instantaneous and fleeting moments in time when life gives us ever so brief glimpses into the nature of things that otherwise, in the course of daily life, might elude us.

The camera, in the hands of an ever-vigilant photographer, can cut through the misty fog of human emotion to reveal, with stunning clarity, that which lies beneath the surface of things - truths that many choose to avoid or ignore.

That is the power of the medium.

And, it is also a great tool for capturing precious family memories that can be cherished for ever and ever and ever and ever in very large mural-sized prints ..... on a wall .... in the living room .... under track lighting .....

picture window # 8 ~ Walking down Main Street, gettin' to know the concrete

A picture window in a picture window • clickto embiggenA few days ago, while looking for an Eggleston Tricycle picture to link to, I came across a blog by the name of Condition Uncertain.

What caught my attention was the masthead title of Like A Brown Bird Nesting In A Texaco Sign with a subhead of "An intoxication comes over the man who walks long and aimlessly through the streets. With each step, the walk take on greater momentum; ever weaker grow the temptations of shops, of bistros, of smiling women, ever more irresistible the magnetism of the next street corner, of a distant mass of foliage, of a street name."--Walter Benjamin.

As if that wasn't enough to pique my interest, there was also this quote, "Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen." --Robert Bresson, which was followed by ""Like a brown bird nesting in a Texaco sign, I've got a point of view" is a line from the Silver Jews song "I'm Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You." This blog is a slice of my point of view.

I was hooked. If someone were trying to suck me into an identity theft / money scam / nefarious scheme, the person (Mark Burnette) who had set this little web up had sunk the hook deep into where I live. I just had to explore deeper in the bowels of what, IMO, has turned out to be a very interesting ... well ... uhmm ... I'm not really sure what to call it, but, whatever it is, it is interesting.

Mark Burnette has created a blog that is one part photography, another part poetry, another part song lyrics, another part glimpse of southern life in these here United States. And, when it's all put together, what you end up with is a pretty damn immersive experience. It's not something that I can take in in large doses but it's is fun to return to again and again and pick up in small bits and pieces.

That said, I find that a lot of the photography - especially that of the landscape in and around Mark's home territory - is a genuinely honest and interesting look at life "as it is". There is a distinct nod to Shore and Eggleston in his pictures, but Mark has managed to avoid being a copycat clone of either.

All in all, it appears to me that Mark Burnette, like the brown bird nesting in a Texaco sign, does have a point of view that makes visible what, without him, might perhaps never have been seen. I hope he continues to walk long and aimlessly through the streets, to delve deeper into that state of intoxication with even greater momentum and that he gives us more of the ever more irresistible magnetism of the next street corner, of a distant mass of foliage, of a street name as he sees them.

PS one caveat - Mark needs to figure out how to make smaller pop-up images - most are way too big to fit on anything but a 40 inch display.

man & nature # 10 ~ variables #2

Rustication • click to embiggenOn uesterday's entry, Tom Frost (AKA, Stu Newberry?) called for a reality check of sorts when he opined, "Uh, chemical photography is "immature" in the sense that people's ability to use it (the RAW conversion for you digital people) varies tremendously. Also, I don't think anyone would expect the same results from Velvia vs Kodachrome or Tri-X vs Bergger BPF 200, not to mention the variables in development. Oh, and don't forget, then there's the printing..."

He has a point but it seems that he missed my point - sure enough, there were/are variables aplenty in the film capture domain. Although, it should be noted that the variables with color photography are severely restricted to the choice of what film to use. Unlike its BW film counterpart, color film processing is pretty much a by the book / numbers affair. A little push here, a little pull there with E-6 chemistry was possible but not so much with C-41, but, again unlike BW film, those 2 chemical processes were just about the only choice you had.

Be that as it may, my point was/is this - your results from color film, negative or positive, were determined by the film you used, NOT by the camera you used. If you wanted the Velvia look, you used Velvia in any camera of your choice and, viola, you got the Velvia look. Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Minolta, Pentax, Leica - pick a brand, any brand and you still get the Velvia look. The same holds true for Kodachrome, Ektachrome, Vericolor, Ektacolor, etc. - what you use is what you get no matter what camera you use it in.

That's the standard / consistency I am referring to.

To a lesser extent, this also applies to BW film domain as well - sure there are a zillion film / developer / paper combinations that can be used to obtain a wide range of results, BUT, in each and every case, you started with a known quantity, i.e., a film / developer / paper with known characteristics (no matter what camera you used the film in) from which to do your voodoo magic.

In the digital capture domain there has been a huge paradigm shift - the camera itself determines the color, dynamic range, hue and saturation, contrast / tonal characteristics, etc. of your image capture. So, in a very real sense, one must be both educated and aware of these differences between various camera brands (as well as the differences even within different models of the same brand) when making the choice of what camera to use.

In the digital domain, the camera is no longer a relatively neutral mechanical device. Each and every camera adds its own flavor to the mix.

And god help you if you choose a RAW converter that doesn't work well with your camera flavor - as an example, ARC in particular doesn't seem to work well with a number of camera brands, or, at least, with a number of camera brand models. I and many others have noticed that some manufacturer's propriety RAW files, when processed in ARC, exhibit a characteristic called "watercoloring". A condition in which colors tend to smear and get blotchy much like watercolors do on paper.

The biggest part of these problems is the fact that every camera manufacturer has its own proprietary file format. IMO, this serves only the camera manufacturer as a purely marketing device, not the picturing public as a picturing device. That is why I fully support the idea of DNG - a "universal" format that promises at least some level of "consistency" from which the individual can then go to town in the digital darkroom to create any possible result that their heart might desire.

Then, and only then, will the photographer be truly free from the dictates of what software engineers (and film engineers / chemists) think our pictures should look like.

civilized ku # 84 ~ happy birthday

A night out • click to embiggenYesterday was the wife's birthday so it was off to a local eatery for some celebratory grub.

There were 2 things of note: 1) While phoning around yesterday AM to see what was open, I was advised by all the places that were open to make a reservation. My first inclination was to ask if they were joking - a Tuesday during mud season is not exactly the height of tourist time. Nevertheless, I went along with them and made a reservation. Of course, when we arrived, we were the only ones in the place. Thank goodness we had reservations.

And, 2) On a more positive note, it great to find that more and more restaurants are using locally grown/raised produce and meats. One 3rd generation farm in particular is finding a niche of growing specialty vegetables - fiddle ferns, oriental vegetables, and so on. "Organic" poultry, free-range cattle, and local game are also becoming more available as well.

All in all it just feels good knowing that while you are enjoying a fresh and tasty dinner you are also supporting a small scale local economy.

urban ku # 187 ~ variables

St Francis of Assisi • click to embiggenA short while ago, I wrote about digital capture as an "immature" medium.

My assessment was based on many factors but prominent amongst them was the fact that there is so little consistency in image capture from one camera manufacturer to another, not to mention the lack of consistency within any given manufacturer's model line up. Add to that the fact that the results obtained from any given camera can vary considerably depending upon which RAW converter software that is used (and how you use that software), what you end up with is a very high tower of digital babble.

That said, I will concede the fact that with enough experimentation and fiddling around one can probably achieve similar results from a wide range of camera and RAW converter software combinations. I use the word "concede" because it would require a monumental amount of time and money to do a thorough comparison of the possibilities.

That said, my experimentation and fiddling around have currently - always subject to a change in the digital weather - led me to the regular use of 2 different RAW converters to get the results I am happy with.

RAW converter #1 - As my primary RAW converter I use RAW Developer by Iridient Digital. This is a Mac only converter and RAW processing is all that it does. No libraries, no web gallery creation, no printing / book making capabilities - just RAW processing. I like it because it produces the most neutral and film-like conversions that I have seen to date. The only thing that it lacks is a good highlight recovery function - an addition that is coming in the next update. So ...

RAW convert #2 - For highlight recovery I use Adobe ARC via Bridge. Overall, I do not like the conversions from ACR - too much saturation and a very un-film-like look, but, in my experience, this software seems to offer the best highlight recovery available. With the current state of the art in digital sensors - less than ideal in dealing with extreme highlight values - highlight recovery is what I most often need.

In today's picture of St. Francis of Assisi, the entire upper right quadrant of the picture had lots of blown out detail - the white siding on the house and the pool sign and building facade were especially bad. ACR brought them back to respectable values.

In order to have the best of both RAW converter worlds, after processing the image in both converters, I lassoed the entire UR quadrant from the ACR conversion (with an 80 pixel feather) and dragged it into the RD conversion file while holding down the SHIFT key for perfect registration.

Merge the layers and, viola - a picture with color negative-like dynamic range.

The moral of this lesson is simple - spend enough time (and some not insignificant amount of money) experimenting and fiddling around and, even with an immature medium, you can find a way to get what you want - at least until the next inevitable and never ending update of one (or all) of the variables in the equation.

Questions; Do you shoot RAW? Do you use only one RAW converter? Have you tried others? Or, with in-camera jpegs becoming better and better, do you just push the button and let the camera do the rest?

ode to Eggleston

Call me Oblio • click to embiggenLate Sunday AM, Hugo rolled into the kitchen with a wizard hat saying, "Pretend I'm the kid in The Point movie - Oblio."

So, of course, we called him Oblio for a while but I was immediately struck by an overwhelming desire to picture Oblio on his roll-y thing in the manner of Eggleston's tricycle picture. Now, if I can only sell the picture for something near the $250,000 Eggleston's photograph brought at auction in 2004.

man & nature # 9 ~ ups and downs

Flowers and hydrant • click to embiggenI have been spending some time surfing the web for photo blogs of interest - man, there is a lot of crap out there. A few gems have surfaced but along the way a few bummers have showed up. Two in particular, struck a note of interest with me.

One entry on What Was I Thinking is about photographer Chip Simons - a photographer whose work I have known about for quite a few years, mostly through commercial photography publications. His work always seemed kind of "out there", which I liked, and he seemed to be doing quite well in the commercial photo biz.

In any event, I haven't been following much about the commercial photo biz for a number of years, so this piece caught my attention when I came across it. Be sure to read his Bio for the whole story about a photographer who had and lost it all.

Then there was this piece, An Argument Against Photography, which is basically the opposite of the Chip Simons piece - a rant from a photographer who never got it (at least not yet) ....

These pieces are apropos of nothing in particular - I just found them interesting.

picture window # 7 ~ then and now

NYC window, East Village • click to embiggenPreviously, I mentioned John Pfahl's Picture Windows book from his 1978-1981 series of the same name.

One of the big differences between his picture windows pictures and mine is the nearly total lack of interior detail in his pictures. I am fairly certain that his "choice" of this approach was in fact a "Hobson's Choice" - the technology of the day simply did not allow him to capture the full range of light presented by such a scene. Consequently, he composed tightly to the window itself and the interior walls provided a mostly featureless "frame" to the exterior view. This was an effective visual device that lent emphasis to the outside view.

My picture windows occupy much smaller portion of the picture than Pfahl's do. There are number of reasons why I chose to picture this way, but, I was afforded an actual choice because of today's digital darkroom technologies - all of my picture window pictures are a blend (manual, not HDR) of at least 2 different exposures of the same scene - 1 exposure for the exterior scene and 1 for the interior scene.

I have chosen to picture in this manner because I am most interested in exploring the relationships between the inside and outside worlds - a task that was difficult but not impossible in the good 'ole analog days. A task that is much easier to pursue in the digital era.

IMO, one of the blessings and banes of the digital darkroom is the seemingly endless possibilities of image editing that are available. It seems to me that there is quite a bit of doing it because I can stuff being done that creates little more than technical showmanship and/or excesses. But perhaps that is to be expected when kids are given a new toy to play with.